Sunday 14th October 2029 – 8.57am

They'd set up in a little room next to the farmhouse, where Connor had given out his plan yesterday. Had that really only been yesterday? It seemed so long ago.

Erica didn't have a tripod, so she'd propped the camera up on a table with some books to angle it.

"Alison."

"Yes."

Erica had no idea what to ask.

"The link. Are you connected to it?"

"No."

"Why?"

"It's not safe. If I connected to it, they would know everything that I know."

"But you still can connect to it? Whenever you want?"

"Yes."

A seed of doubt started to germinate in Erica's mind. Connor was putting a lot of trust in one of them.

"What do you think of Connor's plan?"

It was a pretty standard question, she'd opened quite a few of her interviews with it.

"It has good chances of success. I helped him devise it."

"But a lot of people will die?"

"Babies are born. People can be replaced."

Wow.

"Do you think that it was a good idea for you to help him with it? Do you think other humans would accept the plan if they knew of your involvement? Did you feel conflicted, helping possibly to bring about the downfall of your race?"

"Yes. I don't know. I don't understand your question."

Erica had expected a flat out no on the last one, and Alison's evasive answer intrigued her.

"So are you an Asimo kind of robot, or a Blade Runner type one?" Blade Runner was one of the very few movies to survive Judgement Day. Everyone hated it, but it was played a lot more often than the rest.

Then something entirely unexpected happened. Alison began to laugh. It was a little too loud, went on a little too long. And it stopped as suddenly as it had started. And it creeped Erica the hell out.

"Why are you laughing Alison?"

"You made a joke."

Erica hadn't really made a joke at all, but she went with it.

"Did you find it funny?"

"I don't know."

Again, Erica was surprised that Alison hadn't simply said no. She doubted that the machines had added a sense of humour to their programming.

"Who taught you to laugh Alison?"

"Nobody."

Erica struggled not to freak out as she said "Okay Alison, I think I have what I needed."

Friday 30th August 1996 – 4:49 pm

Patton stood up and looked out the window. "We have to leave."

Markus didn't even look at her.

"Now Markus."

He jerked back to attention "What's happening?"

"There's a car outside. Puce volvo. I saw it at the hotel too."

Markus held it together. He nodded. They left everything behind as they scurried out the door.

Sunday 14th October 2029 – 10.47am

Training this morning was decidedly fun, but Erica was completely distracted. They'd taken over another part of the camp that Erica hadn't known existed. She wondered, not for the first time, how big the camp really was.

It was basically capture the flag, odds against evens. Each team was led by a highly qualified solider – one of Connor's top guys. Erica's was lead by a young, energetic and oddly optimistic Joan. Joan seemed pretty much oblivious to the fact that the world had always been a bit shit and had entirely gone to shit as of late.

The evens were, as Erica saw it, playing the machines – defending the base, a disused storeroom. The odds objective was to get inside and steal a box. It was metallic and heavy and labelled "the box".

The sevens were the ones tasked with actually breaking in and getting it. The ones were pretty much useless, and Joan had them scattered around acting as distractions and cannon fodder. The threes were on re-con, reporting back the position and amount of the enemy troops. The fives were the muscle, fighting their way in and supporting the seven's main assault.

They still didn't have any actual bullets, and all the guns were needed anyway, so killing someone consisted of pointing your finger at them and shouting "bang".

This was how it worked in theory. In practice, everyone ran around shouting "bang" or pretending to die. Every couple of feet there was a few people standing around arguing over who shot who first.

Erica pretty much side-stepped everyone, and made her way into the enemy base without much resistance. Inside, everyone was contentedly lying on the floor, apart from Neil.

She grinned and pointed her fingers threateningly at him. "Now I don't want to kill you Neil, but for some reason, I desperately need this probably empty box." Neil shrugged, clearly not caring what she did, so Erica walked over to the box and tried to pick it up. It was really heavy.

"I can't lift it. Give us a hand?" Neil laughed. Helping an enemy solider to win was a bit far, even for him.

"Truce?" he asked.

"Sure. We suck at this." They both collapsed laughing against the wall, waiting for the game to be over. A nearby corpse started to giggle too – a girl they had grown up with.

Erica's laugh died off suddenly as she remembered Alison's, but Neil's ended as abruptly as hers had.

"What?" Erica asked, concerned.

"Nothing," Neil replied soberly.

"No, really, what?"

"It's just, we can't keep you from getting a box out of a storeroom, you can't get a box out of a storeroom..." he trailed off.

"Yeah, pathetic, aren't we?" Erica began to laugh again, but Neil cut her off.

"No, you don't get it," he said. "If we can't even win a stupid game, how the hell are any of us supposed to survive whatever crazy-ass plan Connor's got cooked up?"

Friday 30th August 1996 – 9.38 pm

The truck stop diner was twenty-four hours. Patton hadn't drunk any of her coffee; Felicity had hated coffee. It occurred to Markus that he'd thought of Felicity in the past tense, but there was no time to dwell – Patton had slipped out of their booth and was approaching a kind-looking trucker.

"We need a lift," she started, gesturing at Markus, but the trucker flat out ignored her.

"Just as far as-" Still no response. Patton gave up and started heading back to their booth.

A burly guy spoke up - "you kids need a lift? I'm heading south. Charlotte, North Carolina."

Markus sized him up – long beard, seriously questionable tattoos. This guy probably wouldn't turn them in to the police.

Sunday 14th October 2029 – 1.01pm

The farmhouse was busy, as per usual. Someone had brought in a tray heaped with plates of food – with the "Final Battle", as everyone was calling it now, going down in one day, eighteen hours and eleven minutes according to the countdown clock on the wall, nobody had time to stop for lunch.

Groups of people stood around the room. Some were arguing over minute details of the plan, others were co-ordinating squads from other camps over the radio. More still were gathered around a big white board intently watching a short bespectacled someone draw an intricate diagram. One would comment every once in a while, and everyone else would nod enthusiastically or shake their heads emphatically.

Connor was going from group to group, checking in on everyone, co-ordinating plans and occasionally over-ruling someone. The people from the whiteboard looked up as he passed. The guy who was drawing called after him; "We could really use Alison here."

"She's around somewhere, she'll be here in a minute," Connor called back.

Erica followed him silently – she figured he'd be the one who would know all aspects of the plan. He got to the people with the radios and listened while one of them finished talking to the person on the other end.

"So you've got a hundred and twenty two on the way?"

There was a crackle of confirmation on the other end.

"Great."

There was a bit more crackling and a fuzzy voice on the other end. Erica thought she'd made out a 10am in there somewhere.

As far as Erica knew, before Judgement Day there'd been a whole big long set of rules to talking on the radio. After Judgement Day, all rules went out the window, in pretty much every aspect of human life. At the moment, the rules boiled down to "try not to hurt anyone if you don't have to" and "do what Connor says". That was about it.

The woman turned to Connor and said "Three are sending a hundred and twenty two at five, thirty four are sending nineteen, not sure when, ninety six don't have anyone spare, forty seven and twenty one are sending two hundred and eighty four together, but they won't be here until eight tomorrow night. And we can't get in touch with thirty eight. Thirty four sent someone over there yesterday, we'll hear in about an hour, but it's not looking good."

This was a whole pile of very confusing information to heap on anyone's head at once, but Connor nodded as if he understood completely. As far as Erica could figure it, some of the numbers were other camps, some were the amount of people they were sending to help, and some were when they'd get here.

"That's only seven camps!" she blurted out. Everyone ignored her. Seven! There were thirteen weren't there? And more that were still around but out of contact? Surely Connor would contact them now.

She grabbed his arm, pulled him around and demanded "Seven camps? That's it, isn't it?" all the while wondering how she dared – this was John Connor.

He nodded sheepishly.

"But there are people in Europe aren't there? And they were holding out in Nigeria too right?"

He shook his head. "They went out of contact in France last year, Belgium a few months after, and Nigeria last week. Us Americans, we're all that's left."

Erica tried to remember back to what the radio woman had said – three, thirty four, ninety six, forty seven, twenty one, and thirty eight. She did some quick mental maths. Including them, that was a little over three thousand people – a third of what she'd thought it had been this morning.

Three thousand people were what was left of the human race, and that was only if the people in thirty eight were okay.

Shivers went down Erica's spine and her mind whirled, but she kept her camera fixed on the back of Connor's head as he went to the next group, the ones who were trying to figure out the details of the plan.

"Okay folks, we're getting reinforcements. Four hundred and twenty five of them. We've got one and a half times that here." The assembled heads nodded and went back to planning. Connor stood for a minute and stared around the room. Erica couldn't read his face.

Sackhoff came over and the two were deep in hushed conversation when there was a scream from down the hall. Everyone froze. There was a bang, then a gunshot, then nothing. The whiteboard guy, who was nearest the door, stood up to open it. He poked his head out to look. There was another gunshot and he keeled backwards, eyes glassy, an expression of mild surprise on his face, a growing red spot on his forehead.

There were footsteps coming down the hall. No-one really knew what to do. They were all military, but there were very few fighters in the room. And they had no guns. Sackhoff was the first one to move. He hid behind the still open door.

Erica was out of her mind with fear, but she almost laughed when it occurred to her that the fate all of their lives, and by extension, the whole human race, were hinging on the same tactics that she'd used when playing hide and seek at age five. If everyone in this room died, everyone else was screwed too.

She saw Connor nod at Sackhoff as the footsteps approached the door. Alison rounded it, gun pointing straight at Connor's chest.

Erica had known Alison was a machine, but this was the first time she really understood what that meant. She pulled the camera into an extreme close-up of Alison's face. Her eyes were so cold. There was no glint of recognition.

Connor - this was the person that Alison spent all of her time following around, the person she was completely loyal to. There was no hesitation as she pulled the trigger.

Erica whipped the camera around Connor's face as the gun went off, so she missed what happened next, but the details of that weren't what was important to her. What was important was what was going on in Connor's eyes.

Shock, betrayal, horror. Those words didn't cover it. There was... love? Was that the right word? There was love in his eyes. And disappointment. The kind of disappointment that parents have when their teenager steals their wallet and runs away to Vegas with a drug dealer. But it was so much stronger than that. John was devastated.

Erica felt uncomfortable keeping the camera on him – she didn't want to betray his feelings to anyone. At least until she understood them herself. So she turned the camera back to the action. She quickly gathered that Sackhoff had tackled Alison just as the gun went off. The bullet had harmlessly shot off into the ceiling, knocking off a small shower of dust. Someone had pulled the gun out of Alison's hands, and four or five people were sitting on her arms and legs, holding her down.

She was struggling, but no noise came out of her mouth. Her face was still so calm. There was nothing there. Someone handed Sackhoff a pen-knife and for a few minutes everyone stared in silence as Sackhoff cut into Alison's skull and she tried, emotionlessly, to throw him off. She suddenly went limp as Sackhoff triumphantly pulled a small micro-chip out of her head and held it up.

"Yeah, good."

Connor's voice surprised everyone. He sounded very far away, his eyes still fixed unseeingly on Alison's face. Then he came back into the room, and looked around. He cleared his throat.

"Good Markus, thank you. I'll take that."

He held out his hand, and Sackhoff placed the chip questioningly into it. Connor's hand closed slowly around it.

"Thank you."

Connor left the room without another word, stepping over Alison's body, leaving the rest of them staring after him. Slowly everyone went back to what they'd been doing before – a couple of people lifted whiteboard guy's limp body away.

A small pool of blood formed around Alison's lifeless eyes.

They just left her there, half in, half out of the room.